Atari Revisionist History - 2600 Manuals

[Kirkland]

Because I'm not allowed to get bored, I've begun a very preliminary listing of manual revisions I either have, have scans of, or have noticed out in the wild.  Obviously, it would be great to crowdsource some fresh eyes while all of us are experiencing a pandemic and are stuck at home with our vast collections.  I know some of you are quite proud of your collections and knowledge on these matters, and I'd love to get some feedback/assistance to fill in the blanks.  I stumbled onto Ballblazer's excellent Atari & Sears list (from another site) over the weekend, so I've slowly been plugging a bunch of holes in my data.

Preliminary spreadsheet attached:

If an item has a "Y", that manual exists in the wild, and should have an empty yellow placeholder under it for a part number/revision.  If the yellow is filled in with a number (or "(none)"), then I have a crappy scan of it.  If it's green, then I own it and most likely have a raw 800dpi scan sitting around. (Did I say that out loud? That's the next project *cough*)

The "one hit wonders" and "PAL-only/Pirate" companies are mostly just placeholders for now- stick to the major 3rd parties until I can fill those sections out properly.  I'm slowly going through AtariAge, AtariMania, AtariBoxed, Atari Compendium, thevgatv.com, wikipedia, etc. to build those sections out eventually.

Hit me up if you can assist, or are willing to part with some of your duplicates for me to buy and scan.

My (known) missing list:

Atari 2600 Missing list

 

I'm also hunting for international color multi-language manuals (anything in yellow on the International Big Book/Newer columns).

Atari_2600_Manuals-International_Kirkland.xlsx

Edited March 24, 2020 by Kirkland

[Ballblaɀer]

Glad to see that you found my Atari/Sears manuals spreadsheet useful. I'll definitely go through my collection to see if have any manual revisions add to your sheet, and I'll also go through my giant stack of dupes to see if there's anything I can send your way.

[Kirkland]

Minor update (aka progress report)

 

I've sourced a decent chunk of the Atari (TM) manuals.  There are a ton of ugly placeholders, but it gives an idea of progress. (green=have, yellow=exists, red=verify/hunt, blue=bad scan- very few marked of what I actually have)

http://www.atensionspan.com/A26/Atari_2600_Manuals-International_Kirkland-pics.xlsx

 

Still waiting on overseas shipping for a handful, but a little sample of what has been scanned so far:

http://www.atensionspan.com/A26/

 

There's still a good stack to go for scanning, then it's back to the 3rd parties for awhile.

(known) Missing:

http://www.atensionspan.com/evil/a26/

Doesn't include a bunch of reprints, etc- mostly for my own quick reference

 

[Philflound]

When I get finished with all my 3rd party carts and boxes on my website, I will be moving on to the manuals. I'll drop you a line, probably this summer hopefully, when I begin the project for manuals. There are a few 3rd party companies I've already completed to my knowledge. Apollo, Data Age, and M Network come to mind. There are also several 3rd party with few titles that I would have put the manual(s) for. Anyway, I'm hoping to update my pdf file within the next 2 weeks. That will give you an inkling of what I've documented. Though I haven't really gone through thoroughly with research as to all the manual variations out there. I've been working with Daniel (see my Giant Variation thread) and he's been helping big time and will actually be extremely helpful even more in the future. I'm about to finally get settled with my move and am going full steam with this finally. This project has been going on for a good 12 years now. Scans are a pain, especially for those manuals with 5 languages. Once I get going seriously with the manuals, any scans you can provide me will be helpful.

 

My research on the variation list will include everything I KNOW exists. I may not have scans though due to seeing just a front/back cover on the internet but not having access to the entire manual. So anything on my list does exist and will have as much information as possible. I recently added a page on Atari items that I think "should exist". The manual list has been dwindling as I've been doing research on them, even just to prove they do.

 

So when I get some time, I'll check out what you have and maybe will update my list if I get a chance. I'm hopefully going to unpack my collection soon and want to get more scans and detailed info if I can. I've been working on Sears with I believe 12 titles to go, but need many side box scans. So again, any help would be appreciated. 

 

Phil

[806]

Hi all! I am looking for a latest-and-greatest list of which Atari 2600 manuals exist in which formats (e.g. does Codebreaker just have a small black/color manual, or is there also a large white/color version?). I have been using @Kirkland's spreadsheet embedded at the beginning of this thread, but I am wondering if there is an updated version, if @Ballblaɀer's Google spreadsheet is more complete, or if there is another better source.  I appreciate the help!

[atari-dna]

On 3/25/2020 at 7:03 PM, Ballblaɀer said:

Glad to see that you found my Atari/Sears manuals spreadsheet useful. I'll definitely go through my collection to see if have any manual revisions add to your sheet, and I'll also go through my giant stack of dupes to see if there's anything I can send your way.

@Ballblaɀer just discovered this sheet, I have been organizing my manual collection (recently).  If I notice any versions not enumerated in your document, I'll post :0)